Saturday, April 17, 2010

I can honestly say I don't have the slightest idea what McDonald's was thinking with this one. I know in the last post I talked about going for "funny" characters at the expense of "likable" characters, but this guy isn't funny and it's not clear to me that McDonald's is really trying to be funny. It just thinks... well, I don't know what.

Fun fact: they sell coffee in stores. They sell coffee machines in stores. If you're an enormous douchebag until you've had coffee, consider brewing some yourself before you leave the house. Also, is this the first time this ever happened? You'd think the guy's roommate, at least, would know the drill by now.

If dog speak could be translated, I'm pretty sure that dog would be saying "Fuck you."

Woman on Bus: "Morning!"Asshole: [stares, but at least manages not to say anything obnoxious]

There are like eleven million McDonald's on the planet and like fifteen million places to get Starbucks. Why the fuck has this asshole not just gone and gotten some fucking coffee yet?

McDonald's employee: "Welcome to McDonald's! Can I interest you in a-"Asshole: "Not before I've had my coffee."

Okay, officially, WHAT THE FUCK. Who the fuck is this fucking asshole and why is he the centerpiece of a commercial? Hey, douchebag: WHY DID YOU EVEN GO INTO THE MCDONALD'S??? I assume you knew they had coffee there, and I saw you just looking at the menu - WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM? Order some coffee or shut the fuck up, you fucking knob.

McDonald's employee: "-premium roast coffee for just a dollar?"Asshole: "Talk to me!"

He looks surprised. Seriously, why were you in there at all? There is only one reason why you'd go into a McDonald's while in an "I can't talk to anyone until I've had coffee!" stupor, and that is to get some fucking coffee. This guy's an asshole and an idiot.

After taking one sip of coffee he then proceeds to talk to multiple people on the sidewalk. They walk right past him, and they should, because he's an asshole. I love the triumphant music McDonald's plays during the coffee-pouring shot like they're really pleased with themselves. "Hey, caffeine zombies! Have we got the place for you!" If you're not just trying to be hilarious (and really, even if you are), shouldn't your ad's main character be trying to stand in for your customers in some way? Who would want to think of themselves as this kind of jackass? "Oh yeah, ha ha, that's totally me! God, I'm such an annoying asshole. Well, time to hook this IV of coffee to my vein lest I fail to have caffeine for ten seconds and start to snap!"

Not to get all preachy, by the way, but does it seem odd that you can have a commercial like this, where a character is basically saying "Sorry, I need my morning injection of drugs in order to function properly?" That's calledhabituation, people, and it indicates that maybe this douche should consider cutting back his caffeine intake just slightly.

Just as an aside: here, via a video I found on YouTube while searching for this ad, is what would happen if anyone behaved like this in real life. Yet more proof that everyone hates this ad.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

By this point I'm sure you've all seen that god-awful Staples "Wow, that's a low price" ad. You haven't? But you'd like to punish yourself? Well, okay.

That commercial, however, is not why we're here. We're here because of this one:

That's veteran character actor Joey Slotnick (I did not have to look this up in any way. Is that weird?) as the audience surrogate. And if you saw a guy doing that in a Staples, you would, in fact, probably react exactly as Slotnick does here - with grimaces and eventual sarcasm. But Staples isn't here to bury its ridiculous yelling pitchman. No, he wins this little duel, by smugly pointing to a price that is, in fact, so low that it would apparently cause anyone to go apeshit.

What is really the point here? This is easily one of the five most annoying pitchmen in history. That seems like exaggeration, but think about it. How many characters can you name off the top of your head who are more hateable? I might be able to come up with a handful, but even after I did that, I would have to concede that most of those characters at least have some sort of personality. This is just crazed yelling by an escaped mental patient. Not only is it obnoxious, it's some of the laziest writing you'll ever come across. Bear in mind that this ad is ostensibly supposed to be funny. So where's the joke?

And that was just the first ad. The fact that Staples had the gall to put this second commercial on the air shows that they recognize how stupid and annoying the first ad was. Here, they're admitting that they quite frankly don't give a shit. Why? Because for every reasonable person who hates these ads, there are apparently two who think it's hilarious to recreate them and post it to YouTube. This may not be the single laziest major-corporation, nationally-televised ad campaign in recent memory, but I can't think of any that are markedly lazier.

And the second ad is worse than the first. The first ad, while thoroughly unfunny, at least attempts a punchline.

As McBain might say, dat's de joke. In the first commercial, there's a bad joke surrounded by obnoxious yelling. In the second ad, Staples basically says, "Hey, we know you hated that first ad. So guess what? Now we're not even going to pretend there's anything else going on! We don't care what you think. We're going to shove this awful shit down your throat until you choke on it."

A couple posts ago I talked about those awful Toyota Sienna ads and how I didn't understand why you'd make an ad in which the presumed protagonists and pitchmen are so loathsome. But this really is what we've come to in advertising, isn't it? The point of this ad isn't really to be funny. Not even Staples could possibly think this ad was legitimately funny. But while it's unfunny and stupid and annoying... it is distinctive. In those Sienna ads, that family is awful and I have no desire to emulate them. But I did remember the ad. I personally don't believe the old adage "There's no such thing as bad publicity" - there have been ad campaigns that have led me to stop using a product because I hated them so much. But I'm starting to feel like maybe I'm shouting into the wind here.

If there's one thing I've learned in three years on this blog it's that corporations, almost to the last, are simply not interested in making good advertisements. They're interested in making money, and if Jay Leno, Jersey Shore and the Transformers films have taught us anything it's that in mass culture, there is no prerequisite of quality or value for success. Why does Staples make an ad like this? Because it's cheaper than making a good one and because they don't think it matters. And the sad part is they're probably right.

This is probably reading like a sign-off at this point, and it's not. We're not closing the blog, and in fact I've added a Twitter account - you can follow @windiermegatons if you want - so that I can throw up the occasional bite-sized thought on ads that annoy me but don't quite merit a full post (although sometimes, as with Buffalo Wild Wings, I get there eventually). But I'll be honest: this ad is so bad it's pushed me to the edge of the abyss.